A club house for startups in Pioneer Square

That’s how the folks at Giraffe Labs are describing a new work space in Pioneer Square, a 1,200 square foot location where artists can interact with engineers and computer scientists can write code next to musicians composing music.

The idea is the brainchild of Brian Dorsey and Anders Conbere, two Seattle software developers who were looking for a laid back environment in which to interact with other creative people. They also wanted some cheap office space from which to work.

“We believe that more collaboration will make all of our projects more successful and we’ll be smarter and happier people,” said Conbere in describing the potential benefits.

In some ways, Conbere said the idea emerged from work on Saturday House — an informal group of techies who gather to build new applications.

“So thinking in those terms, we are less about office space and more about open space,” he says. “We’re less about co-workers and more about community.”

Membership to the “club” is just $100 per month, with the group already attracting 18 members. Those members — small startups, consultants and independent developers — typically use the space two to four days per week for part of the day, said Conbere. Members include Nathan Kaiser of nPost, Jesse Clark of ma.gnolia.com, Gregory Heller of Civiactions.com and others.

And Giraffe Labs hits on another trend in the local entrepreneurial community, one in which people pitch in to help others succeed. Perhaps that stems from the open source movement, but more tech industry professionals seem willing to get their hands dirty with startup projects than they did five or 10 years ago. And they are willing to offer expertise when they can.

I touched on that trend last week with the formation of the Accelerator program from the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. BuddyTV co-founder David Niu explained the reason for starting the entrepreneurial education program saying “It is lonely at the top and you sometimes want someone to commiserate with.”

Some of the new shared office spaces, along with online firms in town such as Biznik, are helping to solve that need.

Whether these spaces, clubs and programs can actually generate the next, great startup, movement or application from Seattle remains to be seen.